Vishal Jood’s victims say he brought terror and hate to Harris Park. The 24-year-old Indian student allegedly committed three violent assaults during a rampage in the western Sydney suburb between September and February.
In the first incident, a group of five men allegedly attacked a man with a baseball bat, and kicked him. Then on Valentine’s Day, Jood and four others are alleged to have set upon a man in a Range Rover. And two weeks after that a 10-person armed mob allegedly attacked a man in a car, causing about $10,000 in damage to the vehicle and chasing the victim down the street.
Jood is a Hindu. His alleged victims are Sikhs who believe the attacks were hate crimes inspired by bitter divisions over farm protests which surged through India from last year.
Yesterday Jood was denied bail in the Parramatta District Court. He will remain in custody until a court date in January.
But to many in India, Jood is a hero. Since June, a false narrative has emerged, pushed by social media influencers allied with India’s far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government. Jood, they claim, is a brave patriot trying to protect the Indian flag from violent protesters, and say he’s been unfairly imprisoned, tortured, and denied legal rights.
It’s a conspiracy theory that’s been spread by prominent Indian news outlets, celebrities and high-profile politicians who’ve tried unsuccessfully to kick off a diplomatic storm.
From Haryana to Harris Park
Jood’s story starts with Narendra Modi, India’s far-right Hindu nationalist prime minister and one of the most popular politicians in the world. He has built an unshakeable cult of personality that has remained potent, even as India’s democracy, economy and civil liberties have deteriorated under his rule.
Last year Modi — emboldened by an increased electoral majority in 2019 — passed laws designed to radically overhaul India’s agricultural sector. What followed was one of the largest protests in human history, as millions of farmers, largely from India’s grain belts of Sikh-dominated Punjab and the neighbouring state of Haryana, marched on Delhi.
Those months of protests met with resistance which at times turned violent and then spilled over into Harris Park, the heartland of Sydney’s Indian diaspora community. Local Sikh groups held small, peaceful protests in solidarity with the farmers which were met with counter-protests led by young Hindu nationalists, including Jood, often carrying Indian flags.
The counter-protesters framed their rallies as defending India and the flag from separatists. The largely Sikh protesters have been tainted in India’s right-wing media as Khalistanis, a reference to a now-dormant Sikh separatist movement.
Deepak Joshi, co-founder of Indian diaspora organisation The Humanism Project, says the message sent by the Tiranga, or Indian flag, rallies was clear:
This was some kind of dog-whistle to imply ‘we’re patriots’, and by inference people who are protesting in support of the farmers are anti-nationals.
At the same time, Sikhs in Harris Park started reporting harassment and violence linked to toxic social media misinformation about the protests that spread through the diaspora.
One local Sikh community worker said that although things had settled down since media coverage of the last alleged assault and Jood’s arrest in April, there was plenty of propaganda spreading through the community, smearing people who supported the farmers as Khalistanis.
Conspiracy theory blossoms
Jood remained largely anonymous after his April arrest. But in June, weeks before he was first slated to appear in court, his story went viral in India. His family in Haryana started lobbying local politicians for support, claiming he’d been imprisoned for trying to defend the Indian flag from a violent mob.
“I think the pressure came from his home state of Haryana where his family, with the help of local politicians and celebrities, tried to raise the issue,” Joshi said.
Videos were widely circulated on social media of Jood raising the flag at a rally. A separate video, showing a flag being burned before cutting to Jood at a protest, has been widely shared as evidence of his patriotism and innocence. Kapil Mishra, an MLA with the BJP in Delhi and a rising star with the party, was an early adopter of the cause, urging his followers to contact the Australian High Commission in India.
Mishra is widely accused of instigating a violent anti-Muslim riot which broke out in Delhi early last year after protests against the Modi government’s controversial citizenship laws. He’s also at the centre of the Hindu ecosystem, an online network for Hindu nationalists dubbed a social-media “hate factory”. He’s very influential among Hindu nationalist social media networks.
Local celebrities also voiced their support. Yogeshwar Dutt, an Olympic bronze medal-winning wrestler who has since joined the BJP, tweeted that Jood “raised his voice against Khalistan” and saved the Indian flag. So did Neeraj Chopra, who won gold for javelin at the Tokyo Games.
The narrative was quickly picked up by Indian media. Republic TV, a news channel that regularly promotes misinformation and pro-government propaganda, covered the case in depth, interviewing Jood’s father and claiming he’d been denied legal representation and was unfairly arrested.
Times Now, India’s most popular English-language news channel, has also promoted the false narrative that Jood was arrested for leading a pro-flag rally and that the charges were a result of pressure put on the NSW Police by separatists. There have been rallies in India held to support him, and also Canada and Germany.
NSW Police wouldn’t comment because Jood’s case is before the courts. But the videos used as evidence of Jood defending the flag are from a protest on January 26, India’s Republic Day, a date not mentioned in the charges.
The police media release points to a series of unprovoked attacks with a gang of assailants targeting individuals. There is no reference to rallies or clashes or an Indian flag. Joshi says the narrative about Jood’s innocence is “misinformation”.
The case against Jood is telling and rarely fleshed out in Indian media. He is charged with three counts of affray, three counts of armed with intent to commit an indictable offence, two counts of destroying or damaging property, and assault occasioning actual bodily harm in company of others. If convicted he could face years in prison.
The political pressure
One of the most prominent voices in Jood’s corner is Manhohar Lal Khattar, Haryana’s BJP chief minister (equivalent to a state premier) who comes from the same town as Jood’s family.
“For the honour of the tricolour in Sydney, Haryana’s young Vishal Jood fought firmly with anti-national forces and did not allow the tricolour to be insulted,” the state government said in a statement.
Khattar also says he lobbied India’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar to fight for Jood’s release from prison. He claims Jaishankar promised to contact the Australian High Commission to push for his release.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade tells Crikey it was aware of the media attention around Jood’s case but would not comment because the matter was before the courts.
However, the pressure has been to no avail because as well as being denied bail his visa has expired and he faces deportation.
When Jood returns to Haryana he’ll be welcomed as a hero, and his case remains a chilling reminder of how Hindu Nationalist hysteria has disfigured a post-truth India.
Is Modi’s India the same India where a newborn baby is three times more likely to die in its first year than one in China and nine times more than Taiwan? Is that the India where half the population does not have proper shelter and 35% of households have no water nearby let alone in the house; where 85% of Villages do not have a secondary school; where there are no roads connecting 40% of villages; where ten of the twenty most polluted cities in the world are? Is that the India where bonded and forced labor is certainly more than on par with that of China’s ‘treatment’ of its minorities? Is that the India with its appalling record of treatment of its minority groups and religions? Is that the India where (if it had the will) would have to build 35 thousand homes every day to keep up with demand; the India where 70% of its citizens have no access to toilets and where millions of men, women and children have to defecate in the open giving rise to a raft of diseases? Is that the India that has put down less railway track since its independence in 1947 than China has in the years between 2012 and 2016?
Is that the India where average growth since 1950 has been 6.32% almost double America’s but no one seems to know where the money has gone? Is that the India that has high levels of corruption where for example, a third of the members of the Indian federal parliament elected in 2014 faced criminal charges – 186 out of 543 lawmakers. Of those 112 faced charges that included kidnapping, extortion, causing communal disharmony and crimes against women. Nine were accused of murder, and seventeen of attempted murder.
So that is the India who are our new ‘next best friends’ in the areas of international trade and security – you know the India where, if its citizens did not play Cricket, most of us would most probably want little to do with it
India is a fascinating place with a rich and complex history. It has produced, and still produces, some of the world’s greatest art, science and thought. Yes, it’s still very poor and chaotic, but let’s not be supercilious about that., and let’s separate Modi’s abhorrent ethno-nationalism from our attitude to the whole country.
“India is a fascinating place with a rich and complex history. It has produced, and still produces, some of the world’s greatest art, science and thought.”
As true of India now as it was of Germany in the 1930s.
Godwin!
I worked as a tour guide in India 40 years ago. The corruption was all-pervasive and I doubt anything has changed.
I didn’t mention corruption, but China isn’t much better there.
Dunning Kruger
Only if it is inappropriate. I have seen some interesting articles that suggest that the historical analogies are so strong there is significant scope for appropriate current usage of 1930s links. Perhaps another one would be the historical analogies to the inept western democratic responses to the great depression and rise of extreme nationalism. William Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and his Collapse of the Third Republic give a very interesting inside view of the times. His (very simplified) answer on the fall of France was that it defeated itself by its internal divisions.
Apt given Jood seems a prime candidate for a Hinduvita version of the Nazi SA. Political parties having their own private militia to enforce their version of ‘reality’ on the street is a sure sign of things going badly. To be fair this also applies to the USA in their own strange way.
Oops! I’ll put this in again. I used a trigger word and hit moderation. You will see where.
Apt given Jood seems a prime candidate for a Hinduvita version of the NSDAP’s SA. Political parties having their own private militia to enforce their version of ‘reality’ on the street is a sure sign of things going badly. To be fair this also applies to the USA in their own strange way.
Hindutva, “Hinduness”, is the predominant form of nationalism in India, championed by the right-wing volunteer organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS – a violent militia & rent-a-mob, equivalent to the Brown Shirts).
It is widely regarded as the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s parent organisation, along with its affiliate organisations, notably the Vishva Hindu Parishad.
Hindutva is also championed by individuals and groups in the Indian diaspora.
It’s true of China too, of course, which T of T seems to be holding up as a model.
What is going on in India now is truly frightening. The leadership takes its ideology from the Nazis so your analogy is spot on.
Trouble is, much of the whole country is voting for this cunning creep. Except the south, where historically there is much more tolerance for difference.
He is utterly persona non grata in Kerala – as were the Gandhis and the entire Congress party, post Nehru.
Yes, that sounds like the India I first visited over half a century ago, population under 500M from 350M at Indepedence less than a generation earlier, lived in for several extended periods and continued to visit until the 80s.
It was then that they officially abandoned self reliance, the All India First policy and opted for the neolib madness.
That was heralded by the great announcement that, for the oncoming Commonwealth Game, colour TVs could be brought in by expats without the swingeing duty once the norm – The Nehru policy being that, if India could make something but you chose to import a similar item, the customs duty began at 200%.
It used to be said that the world could not survive if China/India opted for the Western model of development rather than a different model.
I think that has been now been answered – the ‘show-your-working-out’ paper even has a name.
It’s called the IPCC report.
Really interesting piece.
Thanks Kishor.
The propaganda job celebrating Jood follows the Horst Wessel template. It’s pretty obvious where all this is heading.
I know quite a few Sikhs that I like, I know nothing good whatever about the BJP and its racist scum. Give this clown a couple of years hard labour and send him back.
The long established Sikhs on the NSW North coast have been a mainstay of the banana industry since the early 1900s.
When the major growing areas in Qld were devastated by hurricanes (Cyclones Larry in 2006 & Yarsi in 2011) the Sikh growers kept our potassium addiction satisfied even though it meant ‘nanas were sold singly rather than hands for a while.
I’m not interested in what Indians do in their own country, but when they come to my country they should obey OUR laws…just as Australians have to do. You know…’when in Rome…’ and all that!
Just more religious bulls+it causing trouble as usual…leave it at home when you come here, guys!!
Agree. If you left another country for a better life in Australia, don’t bring with you the problems you left behind. We’ve got enough of our own already thank you.
It’s actually political bulls+it that relies on religious division. This is political. Job: keep Modi in power and Hindu Indians feeling tough and righteous. Pathetic.
True but there are more Muslims in India than Pakistan.
None seem keen to love to the soi-disant Land of the Pure.
Pakistan was established, albeit reluctantly, by the alcoholic Jinnah who was a colleague of Mohandas Gandhi when both had Inner Temple practices at the Inns of Court.
“None seem keen to move to…”